


this part of the sky

by Togaki



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Stargazing, Tree Houses, masaru yokoyama is the yuki hayashi to my haikyuu season four part two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28820511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Togaki/pseuds/Togaki
Summary: He’ll remember this night, the foxtails, the sturdy rope, and the stars, and he’ll think of those three tiny dots, right next to Sakusa’s eye, and he’ll recite its name and remember the way he once felt.Atsumu takes Sakusa to his childhood treehouse and shows him the stars.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	this part of the sky

Atsumu takes Sakusa’s hand as he leads him through the tall grass. Foxtails and switchgrass, wild violets and yellow buttercups—every time they wade through the prairie, an answering small branch crunches beneath their feet, toes tucked into the barely damp soil between each lingering sole print and the next. 

He feels Sakusa’s hand stiffen when there’s a scamper around their feet. 

Unconsciously, Sakusa crowds closer, shoulder almost touching with Atsumu’s. 

Atsumu just chuckles as he gives a reassuring squeeze. “What, ya’ve never run into a mole before?”

Sakusa scowls at him.

In the faint dimness of the bursting night sky in rural Hyogo, Sakusa feels like a beacon. Shadows stretch across his face, but there’s that little star-twinkle in his eyes that Atsumu loves to melt in, even despite the flurry of angry quirks in his wrinkles or the pout in his lip as he ruminates longer on the reason why Atsumu dragged him out here without warning, wearing nothing but cargo shorts and a thick, hot sweatshirt. 

Sakusa doesn’t retort, but he doesn’t complain either about the nocturnal animal, something which you would never see in the urban streets of Osaka. Nor does he talk about the muggy weather, and how it’s affecting rivulets of sweat pooling at his hairline. 

They continue. 

Through the grass and across a tiny creak invisible to all but a handful of folks that take care of the untrimmed land every once in a while, they trek. Atsumu’s grandparents used to be in charge. Since last year, he and Osamu have taken turns. 

Eventually, they make it to the treeline where the thick brush of leaves lift once in a while, floating with the wind as it blocks the moon for a split-second, then two, then back again. 

He lets go of Sakusa’s hand when he spies the rope. 

It hangs limply from a strong branch about halfway up a thick tree. When he reaches it, he takes note of any frays or loose knots—any place where the rope might be weak. He feels relief when there aren’t any. His heart almost leaps from his chest when he opens his mouth to ask Sakusa to come over when—

“I’m not climbing that.” 

Sakusa has his arms crossed, the sleeves of his bright purple sweatshirt bunched up at the elbows to give his skin some room to breathe, and the space between his eyebrows is almost nonexistent as he glares. 

Atsumu holds the rope in his hand as he stretches his arms out. “What, Omi, ya ain’t never been atop a tree before?”

“No.”

Atsumu blinks. Well, that’s new. He didn’t know that.

“It ain’t _that_ tall. There are pegs, too. C’mon, I’ll even hold yer hand if that’ll make ya feel better,” Atsumu says, grinning.

“I’m pretty sure if you held my hand, I’d fall on my back and break my skull.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Do _you_ trust a death trap when you see one?”

But he trusts Atsumu—that much he’s sure of. 

Atsumu relaxes and lets go of the rope. He walks over, the twigs beneath his soles snapping, and he rests one hand on Sakusa’s waist, just above his hip bone, as the other touches his face. Sakusa inhales once, a shuddering intake, then breathes out, slowly. The crease in his forehead smoothens. 

Gently, Atsumu thumbs the spot right next to his eye, right where there are three tiny moles, hidden from view because they’re for Atsumu and Atsumu alone. No one will ever know that Atsumu recites three words, always, whenever he sees them, touches them. Not even Sakusa. 

“Come with me?” Atsumu asks, softly. “I want to show ya something.”

Sakusa’s eyes dip lower. He’s just scared, as everybody sometimes is—as Atsumu is now. Though he’s better at pushing it down. 

“Are you actually going to hold my hand?”

“Only if ya want me to.”

His eyes flicker to the rope, the pegs, then up above where he spies the makeshift panel of many boards thrown atop and nailed down to each other. He looks back to Atsumu and finds those luminous eyes reflect back his own under the moonlight. 

“I don’t need you to fall down with me. I’ll be fine on my own,” Sakusa says, then he pulls back from Atsumu. 

His shoes crunch dry grass, then dirt, and then he has a hand, then two, on the rope as he tugs on it. It’s firm. 

He climbs up the pegs, using the rope as help when he needs it, but he finds that the pegs are surprisingly stable, so he uses them instead as he climbs. 

Atsumu watches him as he climbs slowly, like he’s second-guessing every shift in his footwork, and he smiles. 

He follows him from behind, giving a gentle nudge whenever Sakusa seems to pause for too long, but he makes sure to be ready to jump back to the ground if Sakusa ever lets go and decides to dive for a princess-carry. Atsumu wouldn’t be at all opposed to that either, so long as Sakusa doesn’t throw in the towel and leave him. 

He could though. He could, but he won’t. 

About three-quarters up, there’s a makeshift platform his grandparents once put up for him and Osamu. They spent their summer breaks rolling around the grass, chasing each other between winding trails and trees, and stargazing from this very spot as they tried to find Orion’s Belt or the shape of Cassiopeia. Atsumu never quite figured it out, but he liked imagining he discovered the shapes of them anyway, in the infinite dots in the sky. 

And as Sakusa stares up in hushed awe at the view through the perfectly framed hole in the leaves, where dozens of lights blink back at him, Atsumu can’t bring himself to try the same finger-pointing, map-making, star-aligning fascination he used to do with Osamu, because he’s too immersed in capturing _this_ view. 

This view is his alone. 

This night, alone, is his. 

He lays down on his back, arms stretching behind his head like a pillow, as he pats the board and says, “Lay down with me.”

Sakusa does. 

Sakusa stares at the sky; Atsumu stares at him with reverent eyes. 

Softly, Sakusa’s voice comes out as a low, thrumming murmur. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

“It’s pretty, ain’t it?”

“You don’t get this kind of view in Tokyo.” 

Atsumu hums an affirmative. He doesn’t really know what Tokyo is like. 

Even quieter, Sakusa says, “You don’t get this kind of view in Osaka.”  
There’s a barely there mourning, a barely there twinge of penitence that Atsumu wants to wipe away.

_Two years is a long time_ , Atsumu thinks. But at the same time, it’s a blink of an eye. 

“Too much air pollution,” Atsumu says, chuckling. “‘Course ya wouldn’t get this there. It’s one-of-a-kind.” His rural roots pride is really showing.

Sakusa snorts. “I’m pretty sure you could find this in any place in the world, given the right conditions and circumstances.”

Then he pauses, stilting, as if recognizing he’s said something wrong. 

Atsumu hears it, too—hears it almost immediately—but he just breathes in slowly and peels his eyes away from Sakusa. 

The back of his head thumps against the wood. He brings his arms down to curl together at his belly. 

“Yer right. I guess I just want ya to think it’s more special than it actually is. But,” he says, gaze recalling desperately the times when nights were spent up here with assorted books and lukewarm tea and sweet-wrapped candies, “it took yer breath away for at least a second, right? It made ya go, ‘Oh, now _this_ view. There ain’t anything else like it.’” He lets loose a breath, and it streams out like a river. “That’s all I hope for, really.”

It’s Sakusa’s turn to shift and look at Atsumu. “Atsumu…”

Atsumu shakes his head. “No, no. Forget I said anything. It’s a stupid thing. Let’s just enjoy this, alright?”

He just wants this moment untouched. He just wants this moment to remember. 

Slowly, Sakusa sinks back. He settles against the wood and looks up at their part of the sky. 

Sakusa says, “Thank you for showing me this.”

“Anythin’ for ya, Omi.”

“Thank you for bringing me to your grandparents’. I wish I could have met them.”

“They woulda hated ya.” 

Too stuck-up, too high-maintenance, and too pampered from living life in the city—he’s pretty sure they would have chased Sakusa out before he even breathed one word. Then, maybe a silent offer of tea, maybe a challenge of go just to see if Sakusa was worth the mettle. And Atsumu would grin. 

“I would have tried,” Sakusa says, bristling. 

“I know. It’s not yer fault.” His grandparents were always a bit fussy. 

“I was serious, you know.”

“What?” Atsumu snorts. “Are ya planning on picking a fight with them now that they can’t touch you?”

“I’m not talking about that.”

“Then what _are_ ya—”

“Atsumu.”

The creek bubbles nearby. Crickets chirp like a song in the night. The leaves rustle with the wind. 

Atsumu thinks of finding constellations at five years old, ten years old, fifteen, twenty, now. They were like a map he could never quite figure out. It’s not like they ever changed on him—they moved slowly, achingly, across thousands of years. They were difficult to learn, to remember, but he just figured he would always have time. 

Sakusa leaves in a week. Their relationship ends tomorrow. 

They already discussed this. Weeks—months back. 

His heart has had time to settle.

“Omi, please, I can’t—”

“Did you ever think about how it felt for me to hear you give up?” Sakusa asks, like a firefly that bumps incidentally against your cheek. “I wasn’t the one, you know. I wasn’t the one that brought it up first.”

He turns on his side so he faces Sakusa. Immediately, he’s startled when those same black orbs—those same star-twinkle eyes—gaze back softly at him. 

He’s spent nights mapping out the constellations in the sun-kissed marks on Sakusa’s skin. He knows the three tear moles to the left of Sakusa’s eye; he knows the name for that specific star-pattern even though Sakusa won’t recognize it. 

There’s a lodge in Atsumu’s throat. “Ya would have brought it up eventually.”

He never imagined he’d be the type to let somebody go when in love. He thought he’d be the kind of person to hold on, desperate even, so it came as a surprise when he didn’t even find a trace of that during the initial announcement.

He simply wants Sakusa to do what he wants to do, even if that doesn’t include Atsumu.

“Maybe,” Sakusa says, and it’s what Atsumu was expecting. Then there’s a flash of pain across Sakusa’s face. He tries to hide it, but it’s hard to hide from the person you’ve spent the last two years bearing yourself to entirely. Sakusa says, “But I would have wanted you to say no.”

“It would have puttered out eventually,” Atsumu says. He watches as Sakusa’s hair flattens, sticking to his face from the sweat. And he just knows he’ll miss that. “We’re not the type of people to do well in long-distance.” 

“And how do you know what type of people we are?”

Because they’re them. Because they’re them, and Atsumu treasures the way he wakes up in the morning, sun streaming through the translucent blinds in their window, and the tufts of Sakusa’s curls stick up wildly while drool threatens to drip from his mouth, and then Atsumu leans in to press a kiss to those three dots, saying “I love you, I love you, I love you” in his head, over and over again, because that’s what he thinks of when he sees them—the name he gifted it long ago.

“There’ll be other people,” Atsumu lamely offers. “‘M not that special.”

“Maybe,” Sakusa says. He says it straight. Logical, rational. The chink in his staltwart expression says something else. “But maybe not. I don’t understand why you decide to be humble about this of all things.” 

“Why not? Ya always did say how ya hated it when I bragged,” Atsumu jokes. 

The joke lands flat, though, because Sakusa’s lip quivers. 

Atsumu doesn’t dare reach over. 

In all their time together, he has always wished the best for Sakusa. Then, and now. 

“Hey,” Atsumu says. Sakusa’s eyes are growing bleary. He’s trying very hard not to let the welled tears overflow. “Don’t wait fer me, ‘kay?”

“ _Atsumu,_ ” Sakusa says, and his voice is thick with the tears in his throat. Sakusa breaks a little.

“Nah, I’m serious,” Atsumu says, emotion pooling deep in his stomach. He hates seeing him cry. “This ain’t worth dragging out. But I know you. And I know yer gonna be stubborn. So I’m telling ya, if ya find somebody else, do it, ‘kay?” 

Soon, he can’t claim that he’s the only one who has ever had this view. This beautiful, heartaching, precious view. 

Sakusa reaches across and Atsumu lets him. He lets Sakusa hold his cheek. His long fingers graze against the skin like feathers. The touch is hardly there. 

“This isn’t fair.”

Atsumu smiles bittersweetly. “And since I know yer _definitely_ gonna be stubborn, I’m gonna challenge ya to actively try.” 

Try, and fall in love again. Try, and remember these two short years as something sweet to look back on.

Or who knows? In two years more, Atsumu himself might forget all about this night. It’ll be tucked away, a memory that he failed to hold onto. He’ll forget about the way Sakusa paws at unstraightened bed sheets, or the way he grimaces at red horizons because he knows it means rain will come soon. He’ll forget all about the constellations in Sakusa’s skin that he committed to memory—that he named, one by one, within the walls of their bedroom. 

“I don’t want to break up, Atsu,” Sakusa says, shuddering. He huddles in like a ball. “If I knew signing those papers would lead to this, I never would have said yes.”

“Shh,” Atsumu says, patting Sakusa consolingly on the back. Sakusa’s tears run down and stain his sweat-soaked purple sweatshirt. “Don’t say that. I wouldn’t have let ya if you tried.”

“ _But, Atsu_ —”

“Think of it this way, Omi,” says Atsumu. “You’ll go, and you’ll get to experience the whole world. I can’t offer that, not in a million years. But if ya come back, then I get to share in that, if you’ll let me.” That’s a big _if_. 

Sakusa sniffs. “And where are _you_ in all of this? Are you planning on staying single the entire time?”

“Who knows?” he says lightly. “Whatever blows my way.”

He doesn’t think he’ll ever feel this way again. Not like with Sakusa. Not like with this.

“That’s so hypocritical.”

“But ya love me anyway.”

“If you know that, then why—”

“Omi.” 

It’s the way those eyes crinkle and kiss the stars. It’s the way those lips sigh only for him when he presses a chaste kiss to his forehead. 

“I love you.” Sakusa’s heard it a thousand times, and each time it sends flutters in both of their hearts, but this is probably the first time it’s hurt. 

Atsumu pulls away from Sakusa, slipping out of his sweaty and tear-streaked embrace, and lays again on his back. He folds his hands across his stomach and stares up at the sky. This is probably the last time he’ll be able to do this in this tree house and not feel like tearing up. 

Sakusa continues to look at him, wistful.

“You can’t tell me what to do, you know,” Sakusa says, voice thick with fettered-out emotion. Something thoughtful brews in his eyes. 

“I know. How long have I been putting up with ya?”

“Even if you tell me to go for it, I probably won’t.”

“Even if each and every one of them is _actually_ special?” Atsumu teases.

Sakusa reminds him of chasing bullfrogs and catching beetles. He reminds him of memories he was never a part of—and will never _get_ to be a part of. 

“Nothing’s special, Atsumu,” Sakusa says. “Nothing is innately special, even you.” 

“See?”

The moonlight gets just a little brighter, or maybe it’s all in his head because he wants it to happen. The light shines on Sakusa, and it makes him a beacon.

“But that doesn’t mean it can’t _become_ special,” murmurs Sakusa, and the foolish, childish longing is rich in his voice, a whisper to be lost. “Though I’m not sure if you understand that right now, being the way that you are.”

The leaves rustle again with the wind, and the crickets chirp, just a little louder. The sky looks like it’s painted with fireflies. 

“Say,” Atsumu says, “look at the stars with me, Omi? I want you to see ‘em.”

If this is their last night together, he wants it to at least be a good memory. 

“Omi?”

“I am.”

“Are you, though?” He didn’t hear a shift. 

“I am.”

After tonight, Atsumu will mourn for a period. He’ll probably hole up in his shared apartment with Sakusa, even though it’s already been cleared out of most things that remind him of Sakusa. Sakusa will go to Tokyo, spend the week with his family, and Atsumu won’t see him off. 

He’ll think of him, plenty at first, dwindling with time, then time and again, and Sakusa probably will, too. 

But maybe, if Sakusa decides to one day, he’ll return. Or maybe he won’t. 

And all of that’s okay. Because he’ll remember this. He’ll remember this night, the foxtails, the sturdy rope, and the stars, and he’ll think of those three tiny dots, right next to Sakusa’s eye, and he’ll recite its name and remember the way he once felt.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/togaki_tana)   
>  [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/togaki-kun)


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